Cyber Monday and Black Friday are merging

The pressure to capture a rapidly growing percentage of online holiday sales is pushing Walmart and other retailers to offer deals sooner and sooner. Jeanne Yurman reports.

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Walmart may be the world's biggest retailer, but it's not without rivals. So the famous discounting chain has moved pre-emptively, offering Cyber Monday deals on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving.
Walmart says it has tripled the number of online Cyber Week products at 23 millions items. And it's increasing its free shipping offers.
The change by such a large retailer is adding to the blurred lines with these traditional holiday shopping days which are getting pushed up sooner and sooner.
Retailmenot's Marissa Tarleton.
SOUNDBITE: MARISSA TARLETON, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, RETAILMENOT.COM (ENGLISH) SAYING:
"If you just look at what's happened over the last few days since the election, you see a tremendous amount of Black Friday and Cyber Monday momentum already starting."
The pressure to be first to offer holidays deals first is coming from mobile shopping. In fact, Forrester Research predicts online holiday shopping will see a double digit surge exceeding $100 billion this year.
Roughly six out of ten people say they'll be hunting down deals specifically this weekend. A majority of those shoppers on Black Friday are millennials - the fuel behind the mobile trend.
Walmart in particular has been fighting to wrestle lost internet sales from Amazon.com, buying e-commerce company Jet.com and investing heavily in its online efforts.
Holiday sales are expected to rise 3.6 percent this year according to the National Retail Federation and retailers cannot afford to lose out on any of it. Those sales can represent up to a fifth of the year's total haul.

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